2o13.o6.11 ~ tweeting sylvester

Community, Jeff Sylvester‘s show of pretty neighbourhood paintings, is wrapping up at Front Gallery (12312 Jasper Ave.) in the next couple days.

The skilled artist, who designed this and this, here uses a really interesting process of painting multiple layers of acrylic resin on birch before and after he goes in with the details, creating kind of a floating effect which fits his theme of being just a tiny part of the long life of houses.

Explains Sylvester, “I guess living in three mature but distinct neighbourhoods (Norwood, Riverdale and now Hollyrood) in the last 15 years has imprinted itself on my brain.

“From just wanting to own a house at the tender age of 25, majorly limiting my choices to what I could afford and subsequently discovering a part of town and becoming a part of a community that I wouldn’t have otherwise considered, to 10-15 years later, wanting to own a home in a neighbourhood that my wife and I felt was an ideal location to raise a family.

“Of course over 15 years your ideals shift substantially. During that time, I’ve taken a close look at my surrounding, via dog walks, walking to the bus stop or LRT station.

“The more I would pass certain houses the more interesting their stories became and the more questions I had. How many families occupied this house over the past 70-80 years? What were their lives like? What was this neighbourhood like in the ’40s? It would appear that with many the houses, not much changed except the ubiquitous satellite dish or high efficiency furnace exhaust pipes growing out of the roofs.”

“Watching my daughter ride her bike down the sidewalk lined with boulevard trees, I can’t help but think that this moment was experienced by generations of fathers on that same sidewalk, it’s a feeling that’s hard to explain.”

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